France’s Roman Catholic Guise faction consolidates its power under Charles, Cardinal de Lorraine, who had become head of the family after the death of his brother Francois in 1563.

Protestant insurrections against repressive Spanish rule in the neighboring Low Countries prompt the cardinal to argue for more vigorous suppression of the French Huguenots.

Queen Mother Catherine de' Medici, touring the provinces with her son Charles IX as part of an effort to forge unity with the nobility, meets in Bayonne with Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, duque d’Alba, the “hard man” charged by Spanish Habsburg monarch Philip II with the subjugation of the Netherlands.

The alarm this raises in the Huguenot community increases when Alba marches his troops along the kingdom’s eastern borders, the "Spanish Road" from Italy to Flanders.

Rumor spreads that Catherine is plotting with the Habsburgs to exterminate the Continent’s Protestants.